


(kisses are) a far better fate than wisdom

by stellatundra



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Mistletoe, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 06:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13518681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatundra/pseuds/stellatundra
Summary: “The worst part is, it’s not even Christmas. Wait, who am I kidding, that’s not the worst part. Not by a mile.”Baz and Simon get caught under some enchanted mistletoe. Things escalate from there.(Or, how Baz and Simon ruined the author’s plans for a perfectly straightforward enchanted mistletoe trope fic by refusing to just talk about their feelings.)





	(kisses are) a far better fate than wisdom

**Author's Note:**

> A re-read of Carry On spawned another alternative get-together fic. 
> 
> Title from a poem by ee cummings.

SIMON

It’s not that I’m following Baz. I’m just… keeping an eye on him. Ever since he arrived, two months late for the start of term and looking like death warmed over, I haven’t wanted to let him out of my sight. Just in case he’s, you know, plotting or something. I swear once he was on his way to the Mage’s office when he clocked me there and changed direction abruptly. 

So when he headed to the library straight after lessons finished, I followed him, thinking that if I could get a look at what he was looking at, it might give me a clue about what he was plotting. I try to peer through the stacks but all I can see is that the book he’s looking at is thick and dusty, bound in navy leather. Stealthily, I creep around the corner for a closer look, craning to read over his shoulder and catch him in the act. 

BAZ

Snow is behind me, breathing conspicuously loudly. I suppose he thinks he’s being stealthy. He’s about as stealthy as a numpty at a pixie party. I ignore him, leafing casually through my book on gerunds. I don’t know whether I’ll survive my final year at Watford but by Crowley I’m going to leave behind me a bloody fantastic dissertation. Miss Possibelf will weep over it while telling future generations of Watford students what they have to live up to in the department of grammar in spell-casting. 

“Are you going to stand there all day?” I ask eventually in a bored voice. Snow lets out a muffled noise and possibly knocks a couple of books off the shelves, but he doesn’t move. 

“I can’t,” he says at last. I turn to face him, one eyebrow perfectly poised in disapproving disdain. His face is pink and he runs one hand through his messy bronze curls. I feel my hand twitch, wanting to do the same. 

 

SIMON

“What do you mean you can’t?” Baz says, looking annoyed. He always looks annoyed when he speaks to me. 

“I can’t,” I tell him, starting to panic. “I can’t move.” I try again but although I can turn, it’s like there’s an invisible barrier keeping me here in this forgotten corner of the library. Still looking annoyed, Baz tries to shove past me. But he can’t move his feet either. My arm tingles where he touched it. It must me the magic, whatever magic it is keeping us here. I swallow hard.

 

BAZ

I can’t move. My hand tingles where I touched the bare skin of his arm trying to get past him. My eyes can’t help being drawn to his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. If this is someone’s idea of a joke, it’s not fucking funny.

“It’s not **stand your ground** ,” Snow says, “or at least, it doesn’t feel like it.” I have to admit, the chances of someone casting stand your ground on both of us without either of us hearing it are pretty slim. My eyes slide around, looking for some kind of clue. An enchanted book, perhaps, or…?

 

SIMON

I look up and that’s when I see it.

Mistletoe. Enchanted mistletoe.

“Baz,” I say, and hear my voice crack slightly on the name, “um…”

I can’t say it. He follows my gaze and I know he’s seen it because he’s swearing, colourfully and at length.

 

BAZ

The worst part is, it’s not even Christmas.

Wait, who am I kidding, that’s not the worst part. Not by a mile. 

 

SIMON

 

I didn’t even know you could enchant mistletoe like that. But I know what mistletoe is used for, and I’ve got a pretty good idea what we’re going to have to do to get out of this.

We’re going to have to kiss. 

Baz isn’t meeting my eyes, and he’s got a pinched look on his face as though kissing me is the worst possible thing he could ever have to do with his mouth. Which considering he drinks the blood of rats (well, probably), isn’t particularly flattering. 

I mean, it’s not like kissing him is exactly on the top of my list of things to do before I die, but it’s only a kiss, it’s not like I’ve never kissed anyone before.

Merlin, what if Baz has never kissed anyone before? He must have, he’s not exactly unpleasant to look at. Plenty of people fancy him. Agatha fancies him. OK, not thinking about Agatha, not when I’m about to kiss Baz.

“Haven’t you ever kissed anyone before?” I blurt out, and I think I see two spots of pink colour appear on his deathly-pale cheeks. 

“Crowley, Snow, shut up,” he says, through gritted teeth. His eyes are focused on my lips. I wet them instinctively. 

And then he kisses me.

 

BAZ

I can’t bear it anymore, all the waiting around. I lean forward and kiss him, hard, on the lips. I mean to pull away again immediately and run away, far away as soon as the curse is broken, but Snow, damn him, reaches up and his hand is on the back of my head, his mouth moving against mine, deepening the kiss. I’m fairly sure the enchantment would have been satisfied with a quick peck but Snow can’t do anything by halves, it seems, and Glinda and Gandalf, it’s good. So good. If this is the only chance I’m going to get, I might as well make the most of it.

 

SIMON

I don’t know just how much kissing the enchantment requires, but I kiss him thoroughly all the same, my tongue in his mouth, my hand tangled in his hair. I had no idea kissing Baz would be so good.

 

BAZ

…

 

SIMON

His mouth is cool and soft and I can’t get enough of it. Of him. I pull back to breathe and he pulls me back in again. I can’t stop. I can’t stop.

Crowley, I can’t stop.

“Spell,” I gasp between kisses, “it must be…”

He jerks back, suddenly, but I pull him back to me and he comes willingly. I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. This is madness. I feel giddy with it. 

Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and a shocked squeak. 

“Spell,” I pant, tearing my mouth away from Baz’s for a few seconds. “Fetch…. Penelope.”

 

BAZ

Snow’s got his back to her but I see the flabbergasted look on Wellbelove’s face and give her a quick smirk before pulling Simon in for a showy kiss, reveling in just how flustered she appears. I mean, we must look pretty hot. I’d watch us. 

Crowley, this could very well be the death of me.

 

SIMON

It feels like we’ve been kissing for hours when Penelope spells us apart with **Just Walk Away**. He’s got his hand on the small of my back underneath my shirt and I’m tracing the edges of his frankly amazing cheekbones when there’s suddenly air between us once more. 

My eyes meet Baz’s for a long moment and then he sneers, shoves past me and stalks away without another word.

“What in Morgana’s name happened?” Penny asks.

“Enchanted mistletoe,” I explain. I’m out of breath and blushing just thinking about why. “We had to kiss to break the enchantment and then we just couldn’t stop.” Penny frowns. 

“That’s not a standard effect of this sort of thing.” She looks me over critically. “Are you feeling back to normal now?”

“I think so. Who would put enchanted mistletoe in this corner of the library?” I wonder aloud. “Hardly anybody comes down here.”

“Well,” says Penny, “hardly anybody comes down here to _read_. People mostly come down here for, er, other reasons. Which begs the question of what you two were doing here in the first place.”

“I was just, you know, checking up on him. He was… probably just researching for his Magic Words dissertation, come to think of it.” I lean down and pick up the blue book, Gerunds, Gerundives and Infinitives: Their Role in Spellcasting. “He must have dropped it while we were…. er, he must have dropped it.”

“Right. Well, I think I’ll go and see how Agatha’s doing. She was pretty surprised to stumble across the two of you.”

Agatha found us? I feel my stomach lurch. We’re not together anymore, but still, if I’d seen her and Baz… my stomach lurches even more. 

“Should I…?”

“I really don’t think so, Simon. Just give her some space.” 

Then I wonder… what was Agatha doing down in that corner of the library? Who put the mistletoe there in the first place? What if Baz and Agatha had an assignation?

I decide the only thing to do is to go back to our room and confront Baz.

 

BAZ

It’s late when I get back to our room. I’m sure Snow will be asleep by now, snoring and snuffling in his sleep in ways that are absolutely not endearing, thank you very much. I’ve fed, and I’ve paced around the ramparts alone, just biding my time. Trying not to think about kissing Simon Snow and failing miserably. It’s all I can think about.

He’s not asleep. He’s sitting on his bed, clutching the book I’d forgotten all about since I dropped it in the library.

“You forgot your book,” he says, practically shoving it into my hands. It’s still warm from when he was holding it and Crowley I’m in trouble if I’m thinking like that. “That is what you went to the library for, isn’t it?” he carries on, accusingly, and I wonder if he’s been rehearsing this little confrontation the entire time.

“Of course it’s why I went to the library. That is generally why one goes to a library, Snow.” I don’t have to force the weariness in my tone. Snow’s constant suspicion of me is draining. I just want to sleep and hope that in the morning none of this day will have happened. (No I don’t, not really.) (I can still feel the pressure of his lips on mine.)

“It’s not why people generally go to that section. Penny told me.” He’s still standing very close to me. I back away. 

“Well people generally aren’t as studious as me,” I retort. “Do you think I enchanted the mistletoe on purpose to snog you? Think a lot of yourself, don’t you Snow?” I give him my absolute best sneer, the one I reserve for special occasions. 

“No,” he shouts back, chin wobbling with anger, “I think you were trying to snog Agatha!” His hands are on my chest, pushing me, but there’s nowhere for me to go, my back’s up against the door as it is. 

 

SIMON

 

“You really are an imbecile,” Baz tells me. He’s aiming for cool and disdainful, I think, but there’s a hitch in his voice and I can almost feel his heart beating under my palms, fast as a jackhammer. Does this mean he’s lying? I didn’t even know his heart did beat. “One, I would never cast a love spell or a lust spell or whatever that was on anyone. I mean, I don’t need to resort to such methods. Two, I’m not in the slightest bit interested in Agatha bloody Wellbelove. Maybe she’s interested in me.” 

He smirks again and I want to hit him in his perfect, kissable mouth. Wait, where did that come from?

“And three… fuck it.”

I don’t get to hear three, because his mouth is on mine, cool and determined and oh so good. It’s different this time because I’ve got him pressed up against the door, the entire length of his body against mine, under my hands, right where I want him. Where I’ve always wanted him. I tilt my jaw and make his mouth open to mine. 

By the time we pull away he’s wide-eyed and dishevelled and panting for breath. I feel a sort of smug satisfaction at having robbed him of words, for once. I tuck a loose strand of hair behind his ear. He flinches slightly.

“Simon,” he says, quietly. He never calls me Simon. I groan and clap my hand to my forehead.

“The spell,” I mutter, “we’re still under the spell.”

I hear his head hit the door with a dull thud. I look over but his eyes are closed, his expression unreadable.

“I’m calling Penny,” I say. My legs are shaking a little as I walk away and cast **Call Me Maybe**. (She did finally find a use for it, getting round the Mage’s mobile phone ban.) (Although it still freaks me out a little when I hear ringing coming from nowhere. Especially if I’m in a lesson or in the shower or something.)

“Simon?” Penny’s disembodied voice sounds sleepily confused. It must be later than I realised. 

“Penny, it’s me,” I say, somewhat redundantly. “It’s the spell, it’s not broken. We need your help.”

“I’ll be right over.”

The call cuts out and silence hangs heavily over the room. I look over at Baz who is sitting on his bed, hugging a pillow and looking unhappy. I suppose it must be pretty awful having to kiss your nemesis, who you despise. (Or is that whom? Baz would know.) (This probably isn’t the time to ask.) He must hate me even worse than usual. 

“Look, Baz, I’m sorry,” I say. I start to reach out to him but think better of it. Maybe the spell only takes hold when we’re touching. “Penny will sort it out. Then we can stop feeling like… we can stop.”

“Feeling like what?” he asks me, tonelessly. There’s a helpless sort of a look in his eyes which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Feeling like I care about you, I want to answer. Like I want to put my arms around you and make all of the hurt in the world go away. But I don’t say it. Just then, the door crashes open and Penny bursts in in her dressing gown, brandishing her ostentatious ring. 

“As you were,” she casts. I sit down heavily on my bed. 

“Better?” she asks. I nod. Baz shrugs. Penny fixes both of us with a shrewd look, sizing us up as if we’re a particularly troublesome equation.

I don’t feel any different, not really. But I think I can probably manage to sleep without crawling into bed with Baz and kissing him senseless. I still sort of want to, but I don’t feel compelled to. Maybe it’s the sort of spell that wears off slowly. 

 

BAZ

 

I’ve been turned by vampires, kidnapped by numpties and this, this is what breaks me. 

Fuck my life.

 

SIMON

 

Baz is avoiding me. Well, he always avoids me, so that’s nothing new, but now he actually manages to evade me. And, well, perhaps I haven’t been following him quite as intently. We haven’t kissed again. Well, OK, we’ve kissed a couple of times, but one or other of us always manages to break away and run out of the room, and he always looks absolutely furious afterwards. There was one time when we bumped into each other while leaving our magic words lesson and I pulled him into the nearest quill cupboard and we stayed there for about half an hour, attached at the mouth. But that’s it. The rest of the time it’s all cool looks and wanting to smooth the frown away from his forehead. 

Agatha is avoiding me too. We had one fairly cryptic conversation in which she told me she understands now, which is nice for her, but I still don’t feel like I understand anything.

I mention this to Penny while we watch the match on Saturday. Baz is all fluid grace on the pitch, long legged and sure footed. I sigh audibly, and have to turn it into a yawn.

“Don’t understand anything about what?” she asks, distractedly. 

“Girls. Boys. Love spells.”

“Simon. Do you want me to explain the bird and the bees to you?” Penny asks, and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh.

“I don’t mean that. I just mean… Agatha’s being cryptic. Baz is being weird. Well, weird _er_. And it’s just… how long do you think it will take for this spell to wear off completely?” I ask desperately, as I catch myself staring longingly at Baz’s thighs. 

“What do you mean? What spell?”

“What do you mean, ‘what spell’? The love spell.”

“The mistletoe? Simon that was nearly a week ago. It must have worn off. You're free to move around, aren't you? It wasn’t a love spell. There’s not really any such thing. Besides, whatever it was it should have worn off as soon as you kissed.”

“But it hasn’t!” I protest. “I still feel…” I can’t put it into words. I feel. For Baz. That’s bad enough.

“Simon.” Penny looks at me seriously. “Have you ever considered that it might not be a spell?”

“But it has to be! It all started when we kissed in the library and now I can’t stop thinking about him! It has to be a spell - why else would he keep kissing me? He hates me!”

“And you? Do you still hate him?”

I can’t answer. Do I hate him? I don’t think I do. Quite apart from the kissing, which is always amazing, I just want him to be alright. I want to hold him and make the rest of the world go away. 

Oh Siegfried and Roy, I don’t hate him at all. 

“But what if he engineered this whole situation in order to seduce me into falling for him so that when it comes to the war I won’t be able to stop him?” I ask desperately. 

“Do you ever listen to yourself speak?” Penny asks.

When you put it like that it does sound unlikely. But he’s always hated me. Hasn’t he?

 

BAZ

I really, really hate Simon Snow. 

I don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve being hopelessly in love with such a complete idiot.

He’s still convinced we’re both under a spell, even though it’s been a week since the mistletoe incident and we’ve kissed now on five separate occasions. Six, if you count that time we both leaned in before hearing Bunce’s voice further along the corridor. His lips barely brushed mine but I was useless for the rest of the day. Miss Posibelf had to ask me if I was OK. 

Kissing Simon Snow has ruined me.

(Ha! Gerund.)

This is worse, somehow, than it was before when I was just pining helplessly and pretending to hate him. I hate myself a little more every time I give in to it, to him, with his mouth and his hair and his hands. The only thing keeping me hanging on (by a thread) is the knowledge that he wants me. He might be fighting it and convincing himself it’s all a spell, but he wants me. 

At least I don’t think he’s engineered this entire situation to keep me in a constant state of giddy infatuation so that when it comes to the war I’ll be completely useless and unable to stop him. For one thing, I don’t think he’s that complex. For another, if he’s worked out that I’m mad for him, then he should bloody well know I was never going to be able to kill him anyway. Kisses or no kisses. 

I don’t know what to do. I think about asking Fiona for advice. I think about asking Bunce. 

Crowley, I’m done for. 

 

SIMON

I’m not expecting Baz to be there when I go back to our room. I’m certainly not expecting him to walk out of the shower, skin steaming and draped only in a towel. I can’t stop myself from staring at his pale skin and all words desert me. Even more so than usual. 

If this is part of his master plan to seduce me, it’s not going to work. (Fuck, it definitely is.)

Judging by the look in his eyes when he sees me, and the way he grabs an armful of clothes, turns round and slams the bathroom door behind him, he wasn’t expecting me to come straight back here. Not a master plan then. 

At least this gives me a few seconds to collect my scattered thoughts. Unfortunately, pretty much every one of those thoughts revolve around Baz’s bare chest, so it’s not much help. 

Eventually, he emerges again, fully dressed, face an impassive mask. He’s just so frustrating. I run my hand through my hair and I can see his eyes tracking the movement. 

On the way over here, I had a plan. A spell had gotten us into this mess, a spell could get us out. I’d cast **the truth will out** and we’d both have to say what we were really thinking an everything would be out in the open. Now that I’m here in front of him, I can see the flaws in that plan. (Penny had seen them, too. ‘That’s really not what I meant when I said you should sit down and talk, Simon,’ she’d said, with an exasperated tone I had been hearing more and more often recently.)(She'd followed it up with, 'don't think I don't know it was the two of you in the quill cupboard'.)

He sits on his bed and I sit on mine. He gap between them feels wider than it has in years. I’ve always thought he was too close and now he feels too far away.

“Look, Baz,” I begin, “I don’t know how to say this…”

“Crowley, there’s a surprise,” he says, with a roll of his eyes. “If this is the ‘it’s not you it’s me’ speech, Snow, you can save it. I know you don’t actually like me.”

“I don’t hate you,” I blurt out, almost as if I have been truth-spelled after all. “All this, the Humdrum, the war, the families, the Mage…” His stormy eyes narrow to dark slits at the name of the Mage. “It doesn’t matter. I mean, well, it does matter, but not to us. Not to this.”

“Snow, you’re not making sense.”

“I mean, you’re not evil. You’re a bit of a dick, but. You’re just a boy. And I’m just a boy, standing in front of a… oh fuck, that’s not right.”

“Snow, if you’re quoting Notting fucking Hill at me, I may just bite you after all.”

Huh. Was that a confession? Somehow, like everything else, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much anymore. Not compared to all these new feelings swirling around inside. Which, when I really think about it, don’t feel that new after all. Just a new perspective.

“I know it’s not a spell,” I say, crossing to sit next to him. “I know it’s not a spell. I like kissing you, I think about you all the time and I don’t want us to kill each other and… maybe that doesn’t have to be our destiny. Maybe there’s a better fate.” I say it all so fast that I’m sure the words have blended into one another. It feels a long time before he answers.

 

BAZ

“I don’t want us to kill each other either.” It’s not exactly a love confession but I’ve always prided myself on my gift for understatement. 

He reaches for my hand.

I make a mental note to buy whoever set up that enchanted mistletoe a box of chocolates or a castle or something. 

Then he kisses me until I see stars. 

Fuck destiny, this is a far better fate.


End file.
